Stay tuned for these upcoming events…

It would appear that spring break is nearly at an end, which means that we are on the verge of yet another round of hectic life. Aside from normal school work to do, there are a few other things coming up. First up to bat is probably the biggest and toughest thing on my plate… Choir Tour. Next weekend, starting on Thursday, we will be leaving on tour, heading up to the Dallas area. We'll be back Monday, and then on Tuesday we'll have a local concert at the chapel on campus. It'll be a really good concert, so I hope you'll be able to come down.
Aside from choir tour, most other stuff is rather minor. A friend is having a birthday get-together, normal activities such as Frisbee and gamers club meetings will be starting back up again, etc. Another semi-major event is also slowly coming up, a game tournament, hosted by the Gamers Club. It is currently planed for the 10th of April, and it will consist of a Monopoly social, a knockout Super Smash Bros tournament, and various other board, card, and video games on the side. We are currently unsure if there will be any entrance fee, as we would like people's input as to how much they'd be willing to to donate. The fee, if there is any, will most likely be for the main tournament, and it will allow us to supply snacks for those who show up. Feel free to tell your friends. I'll try to keep you posted on other goings-on of

LIFE
THE UNIVERSE
AND EVERYTHING

Help, I Think I've Gone Crazy Again!

These last few weeks have been extremely hectic, and I'm having trouble keeping up with everything that's been going on. We've started to pick up the pace on physics stuff, and we are now deeply entrenched in the world of electrostatics. C programing had a test earlier in the week. Theo has likewise been full, as has math and English. Ah, English. I am once again being tormented by English work, work that I should be sailing through. However, I have once again procrastinated, and due to this, I am scrambling to finish this work. My perfectionism has also cut in, and I felt the need to rewrite the entire essay from the beginning, writing around the additions I am including in this draft. Unfortunately, my mind keeps drifting, making it hard for me to work on one thing for more than five minutes, and time seems to be passing at an increasingly alarming rate. As I sit here, I am worrying about finishing this paper, but still distracted enough to not focus on it and ignore less important things such as my blog. Grr… stupid mind trying to worm it's way out of actual work. Hopefully I'll be able to finish this in a timely manner. I also hope that all of you out there are not stuck in similar predicaments. Hopefully next time I shall actually have something productive to say regarding…

LIFE
THE UNIVERSE
AND EVERYTHING

Pledges, insanity and

I think I'm going insane. Well, more insane then I already am. While sitting in the ASC working on some homework, I noticed that there was a group of pledges sitting in front of Lucky's. Actually, it would have been hard for me NOT to notice. Every few minutes, a member of the sorority would walk up, and all the pledges would say, in unison, "Hello Ms. _________, I'm a happy Beta Alpha Sigma pledge" in a sickeningly cheerful voice. It's enough to drive people mad. The sad thing is, this is one of the least insulting things they have to go through. I have to ask why these people are willing to degrade themselves so much, just so they can quite literally buy themselves friends. The things that they go through are insulting, demeaning, and degrading. Why do they put up with it? Why would they willingly allow others to treat them as poorly as they do? It makes no sense.

Well, I've got to wrap up now. Hopefully this won't be found by any blood-thirsty sorority members, otherwise it may be rather difficult to bring you more musings on

LIFE
THE UNIVERSE
AND EVERYTHING

Well then…

It appears that I very nearly forgot to update my blog this week. The only reason I remembered is because I was slacking off instead of doing my English homework. Speaking of which, I need to finish that.

Anyway, in other news, I appear to be procrastinating again. It's quite easy for me to fall into that habit. I dunno why. It's possibly my aversion to actual work. Then again, I also find that once I start something, I keep at it until it's done or until I get stuck, in which case I walk away for a while and find something to do. Unfortunately, this usually results in me not returning to the work so that I can finish it, starting the cycle all over again.

While typing this, I also remembered that I have physics homework due tomorrow, homework which I haven't even started, and I also have a test in physics at 9 in the morning. Great. Well, it seems like my procrastination has gotten the better of me. I failed to do any of the stuff that I needed to do during my free time today, and instead spent all the time goofing off.

Luckily for me, it's only 8 right now, so I still have some time until I need to get to sleep. I may end up working till 1 or 2, but I should be able to get it all done tonight. I should probably wrap this up now and get back to actual productive work. Hopefully next time there will be actual insight into…

LIFE,
THE UNIVERSE,
AND EVERYTHING

Choral Happenings

Welcome back everyone. I guess I can actually say that, now that there are actually people who will be reading this. In this post, I shall be talking about the goings-on in the TLU Choir. So sit back, relax, and get ready for me to start talking about stuff.

If you didn't know, I am in the choir here at TLU. This is actually the first well organized choir that I've been in that emphasizes the actual singing together as a group. I've been in a church choir back home, but that was more or less just thrown together, with little emphasis on the meshing the voices together into a unified whole. This is quite an experience for me, and what an experience it is. Everything seems much fuller, much more dynamic. It's easier to understand what is being said. The feeling of the songs, the emotions being portrayed, everything about it is enhanced. It actually feels like everyone in the choir is part of something bigger.

Enough about the group, on to the songs we are covering in choir. During the Vespers concert last December, we covered a rather wide gambit of rather inspirational pieces, several fun ones, and a couple more serious songs. Of the songs done, I'd have to say that some of the best ones we did were Jabula Jesu, which was a Swahilian song, a rather ethereal rendition of Ave Maria, and Hodie Christus Natus Est. All of the songs were quite fun, although some were somewhat challenging. This semester, however, we are learning a number of new songs for our spring tour. Most of these songs are by Eric Whitacre, a composer known for his rather eccentric songs with dissonant chords. Let me tell you, these things are FULL of dissonant chords and odd rhythms. Because of this, many of these songs are proving quite difficult to learn, but we are making headway. We should be able to learn everything before we head out on tour. I hope all of you out there reading this get a chance to come out to some of our performances. It'll be worth it, trust me. Until then, keep contemplating the mysteries of…

LIFE
THE UNIVERSE
AND EVERYTHING

(Semi-forced) Blog Resurection

Welcome back, all of my zero readers. It would appear that this blog is once again being brought back from the dead, after nearly a year of inactivity. There should be much more posting on here, as I am now being required to write in this blog for my English Composition class. Speaking of which, I am now in college, for those of you who don't know. I am currently enrolled at Texas Lutheran University, my parent's Alma Mater. This is now my second semester here, and I must say I've settled in quite nicely. I've recently changed roommates, as my roommate from last semester decided to switch dorms and move in with a friend of his. In his place, I've gotten one of my friends from the Gamers club to move in. He's more or less settled in now, and we've even gone and started a mini-gamer meet in our room on Saturdays. Munchkin, board games, and the occasional Nerf war with some of our friends. Hopefully I wont get any influx of people showing up for the game night due to this, else we may need to find another place to meet.

Hmm... it appears that this post may not quite fit the guidelines for the blog posts. Then again, we haven't gotten the criteria yet and we don't actually have to write posts until next week. It would appear that these posts should be more focused on what we are learning in this class, extra-curricular activities, other classes and how they tie to this class, and some other stuff. Fun.

Next week, I might write about what we are doing in choir, as I believe that it falls into the categories listed above. Until then, I shall leave you to your thoughts on...
LIFE
THE UNIVERSE
AND EVERYTHING

Time for another rant that no one will ever read.

The focus of this year's post:

The Creationism vs Evolution Debate

For some time now, I've been seeing and hearing about a great battle going on in the "great" scientific, political, educational, and religious arenas, Creationism vs Evolution. It's been in the news, on the internet, turned into the basis for films, joked about, and otherwise thrown about. It shown to be a pressing issue in today's world. It is also shown to be something where you must take one side or the other on. Very rarely does anyone speak of any middle ground, unless it's in a comment on a story taking one side or the other. In the several years in which I have paid any attention at all to the "Science vs. Religion" battle, I have found only one article saying "Hey, maybe these two things can work together." However, this middle-ground-ism makes very little press because (I'm assuming) editors like the controversy, and merging the two would cut off an entire debate.

I think of myself as firmly entrenched in this middle ground. I am a fairly scientific person. I am also a Lutheran. I really don't see why there is any debate, and I believe that I could argue either side rather well. What really bugs me, however, are all the articles that say how "Believers in religion are ignorant fools who don't know anything." Now, of course, I realize this to be a simple Ad Hominem, and to be verifiably false. There are countless scientists that are also very religious men (or women). On the other side of the debate, you have those who follow the bible to the letter and claim that anyone who doesn't believe in it are heretics. However, there are several things wrong with this, including, but not limited to, the fact that:

A) Some people who believe in this don't follow the bible to the letter either, and are therefore heretics,

B) Some of the people who follow this line of thought haven't even read the whole bible, and therefore are not aware of all the laws therein, and

C) There are a multitude of other religions, denominations, and sects that say the same thing, and (at least the more radical) followers of each of these religions have a tendency to get violent with other religions.

I'm sorry if the above arguments seem a little lopsided, I just put down the first things that popped into my head. Moving on, I would like to issue a challenge. Science, or at least true science, is generally acceptive of being proven wrong. When a hypothesis comes along, it is thoroughly tested. If it proves to be sound, it can become a scientific law. However, no matter how many times it is proven to be true, it only takes one test to be false to question the veracity of the law. This is because it is generally accepted that even if something would appear to be true most of the time, it does not necessarily mean that it is true all of the time. Therefore, you cannot prove any scientific "fact" to be totally true, 100% of the time. However, the inverse is also true. Just because something doesn't normally happen, doesn't mean that it can't happen. As for the challenge, pick a story from the bible, koran, talmud, or any other religious text you want, any story at all, and prove without a shadow of a doubt that it is false, that it can't happen, never has happened, and can never happen. Take your time…

Keep trying…

Go on…

I'll wait…

Well? Any luck? I thought not. I won't blame you if you didn't even try. It would be totally impossible to prove that anything is impossible at all times, in all places, and in all circumstances. I'm not saying that this proves or disproves anything, but I would like to say one more thing on this train of thought: if you were writing down the history of something, would you focus on the normal, everyday, mundane occurrences, or would you write down the strange, the fantastical, the out-of-the-ordinary things? Now, what if this history wasn't written down until hundreds of years after it occurred, being passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation before being recorded in a physical form? Which parts of the story would survive? How much will the stories change between the eyewitness account and the fireside story told by the great great great grandson of the eyewitness? What sort of changes will occur in transcribing, let alone translating, the text? While the basis of the story may still be there, the details may be skewed, or missing all together.

This leads me to my final point. Radical supporters of evolution denounce creationism because it says in the Bible that humans were made from dust, even though fossil evidence shows that species changed gradually over time. Does the bible say that some omnipotent being just popped humans, fully formed, on the Earth? While some people claim this, this is merely a literal reading of an imprecise translation of a centuries old tale. While most translations say that the creation happened over several "days", the question arises "Is the modern meaning of day the meaning that was meant here?" While it could have originally referred to a day as a 24 hour period, it could also mean (by our modern definition) a billion years. While the Bible says that man was made from dust, is this again just an error in translation, trying to fit one word from one language into another language that does not have a word with the same meaning? What is the literal meaning of dust? Webster-Miriam Dictionary says that dust is "fine, dry powder consisting of tiny particles of earth or waste matter." Tiny particles. Are humans not made of "Tiny particles"? Today, we would call such "tiny particles" atoms. So is the Bible not correct in this assumption? It does not say anywhere that humans were not made fully formed as humans, it only says that they were "made from dust," or in more current terms, from atoms.

I do believe that I have ranted for quite long enough. While I would love to continue this conversation, I feel that if I were to continue I would forget my original thought process (as indeed I have already done) and go off on wild tangents, leading nowhere. So I shall now bid thee farewell, and remind you to keep an open mind while pondering about…

LIFE

THE UNIVERSE

AND EVERYTHING